


On Reading Past Midnight

by mikkey_bones



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: Gen, Male Friendship, Pets, Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-02
Updated: 2011-06-02
Packaged: 2017-10-20 01:32:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/207376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkey_bones/pseuds/mikkey_bones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holmes comes home late at night and has a series of serious (and not so serious) conversations with Gladstone, the bull pup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Reading Past Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> The brief German quote within this story comes from "The Sign of Four."

Home late, with Watson abed (Holmes could hear his soft snores through the open stairwell door) and Gladstone stirring sleepily from his familiar place by the couch.  Home again, wiping the collected London filth from his boots and the hem of his long coat.  The whole city was shot through with a darkness that let up a small measure when the sun was up, but came back with a vengeance as soon as the gaslights turned on and the alleyways darkened.  And sometimes, like any other mortal, Holmes grew tired of the murder and corruption and thievery that flowed in the streets like the effluence below them in the recently built sewers.

London was a very old city, and had had time to grow dark with memories of death and decay.

"Damnably unpleasant at times, eh, old chap?" Holmes said quietly to Gladstone, whose dark, lambent eyes gleamed in the soft lantern light.  And it was damnably unpleasant at times, damnably tiring, because crime was common and logic was rare.  "And common decency," Holmes said aloud again, the sound of his own voice perhaps a refuge from the multitude of disguises he had donned, the multitude of falsehoods he had communicated, "even rarer."

The dog whuffled in reply and rolled over to have his belly scratched.

"You have your priorities in order, I see," Holmes chuckled, and bent to run his hands across the short fur and soft skin.  His hands, at least, had been wiped clean in the kitchen (into which he had padded softly without disturbing Mrs. Hudson before making his way upstairs).  The nails were well cared for; the fingers dappled with chemical burns and their tips callused from long hours playing the violin.  What he wouldn't give to play now, but _no_ , this was his new roommate and he could not take chances running him out.

"Or his dog, eh?" Holmes asked Gladstone.  The dog panted at him, its tongue lolling out in a toothy, doggy grin.  "Yes, that's a good boy, who's a good doggy?" Holmes asked fondly.  Dogs - dogs and other animals - were innocents, brute beasts.  You could train them to kill, train them to chase intruders with slavering jaws and snapping teeth, but give the same dog a good meal every day and treat it kindly and it would die on your behalf.  He used to believe he would prefer cats, as dogs had quite the reputation for dumb loyalty and cats seemed more discerning - more _intelligent_ \- but, after living with one for some months, he found dogs had there good spots as well.

"Of course, you've known that all along, eh?"

Gladstone, still on his back with his paws absurdly in the air, began to drool onto the carpet.  Holmes chuckled.  "That's enough of that, old boy," he said, taking his hand away.  "I know the carpet has had worse spilled on it in its time, but I’d be hard pressed to think of any now.”

The dog looked at him pleadingly, but he stood anyway, the lantern swinging in his hands and sending a kaleidoscope of shadows across the wall and the floor, dark shapes dancing crazily.  Holmes wiped his hand, the one with which he had been petting the dog and which was now slightly greasy from dog fur, on his pants.  "I doubt I'll be getting to bed to-night, old chap," he addressed the dog, which had rolled back over and was still watching him.  "Perhaps I shall take a leaf from your book and simply sleep the day away."  He shrugged off his coat and hung it on the hook.  As he walked to the door, the chemical apparatus on the deal table gleamed.

Now, there was another advantage to dogs.  Being mammals, their physique was remarkably similar to that of humans - all mammals were, in fact, sometimes uncannily alike.  Thus, chemical experiments performed on a dog could be likened to those performed on a human, with an increase in the dosage to account for weight, of course.  Holmes had not quite had the opportunity to perform tests on Gladstone yet, aside from a slightly disastrous one, which caused the dog monstrous flatulence and Holmes and Watson, great discomfort.  Luckily, Watson had assumed Gladstone had eaten something off the floor.  Holmes had a sneaking suspicion his roommate would not appreciate Holmes feeding strange tablets to his dog and recording the results.

Well.  That could wait until they were better acquainted.  He had to make sure the substances weren't lethal, anyway.

Holmes ran a hand through his dark hair as he turned back from the coat hook and deal table, surveying his - _their_ \- darkened living room.  The blinds were closed against the night draft.  He contemplated opening them, but this apartment was his sanctuary against the night fog and ever-present soot of inner city London.  He didn't want that sanctuary invaded.  Not now, not so late at night.

"The bodies keep piling up, it seems," he told Gladstone, injecting a note of false cheer into his voice.  This recent case was sapping his strength.  It was only a matter of time before Watson found out what he was up to as well, and then Holmes would have to decide whether or not to invite his roommate to become even more entangled with his life.  That was, if Watson showed any interest.  They would, as roommates, cross that bridge when they came to it, Holmes supposed.

"But _c'est la vie_."  He sat down heavily on the couch, stretching his feet out in front of him and kicking off his shoes.  The lantern went on the table, where it shadowed all the piles of letters and newspaper clippings and made the brass frame of Irene Alder's portrait gleam softly.

Gladstone got up with great effort, waddled to Holmes's feet, and then laid down with a heavy sigh, leaning against him.  Holmes smiled fondly at the animal.  "Well, Watson is asleep and likely will be for several hours," he told it.  "Let's both make the best of it, eh?"  Piled up on the chair were several paperback volumes, all well thumbed.  "What shall it be to-night, Gladstone?"

When he was a child he had found that books made many things bearable that would be hard to stomach otherwise, and so he had kept certain favorites by his side throughout life, occasionally adding to the collection but never subtracting.  These were what he turned to when he needed to distract his mind; these were his choice of literature when monographs and agony columns became too close to real life.  And so he picked up the first volume in the pile, worn and battered from much shunting to and fro on trains and carriages, much reading and rereading.  "Petrarch?" he asked the dog.

There was no response.  He put that volume aside.

"Goethe?"  Holmes liked Goethe almost as much as he enjoyed Petrarch, and could read both in the original language.  " _Schade dass die Natur nur_ _einen_ _Mensch aus dir schuf, Denn zum wurdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff_?" he attempted.

Once again, no reaction.  The dog appeared to have fallen asleep.

Holmes scoffed.  The dog had no appreciation for fine literature.  He picked up the third tome - one of Shakespeare's plays, good old _Julius Caesar_.  "What about the Bard?  Have you got a taste for him to-night?"

Gladstone whuffled, perhaps in his sleep.

"You're an English dog, through and through, I see," Holmes commented wryly.  He opened the book to a random page, pulling the lantern closer to himself with a foot.  Then, after a moment's pause, he brought his legs up and sat cross-legged on the couch.  He was more comfortable this way.  "Well then."  Quietly, so as not to disturb Watson, he began to read.

" _I could be well moved, if I were as you.  
_ _If I could pray to move, prayers would move me._ "

A pause, for gravity and verisimilitude.

" _But I am constant as the Northern Star,  
_ _Of whose true fixed and resting quality  
_ _There is no fellow in the firmament.  
_ _The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks;  
_ _They are all fire, and every one doth shine.  
_ _But there's but one in all doth hold his place_."

Holmes had once considered a career in acting.  He was certainly good at disguising himself, of adopting a character's mannerisms and style of speech.  It was something only a trained observer could do, and he often made use of his talents, of course, in his own unique field of work.  But acting still held appeal for him.  Reading Shakespeare aloud, as it was meant to be read, was better than reading it silently to himself.  And he had a captive (though slumbering) audience who was, in fact, at his feet, much like Cinna and Decius and Brutus.  Interesting thought.  He hoped Gladstone would not turn and bite the (quite literal) hand that fed.

" _So in the world: 'tis furnished well with men,  
_ _And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive.  
_ _Yet in the number I do know but one  
_ _That unassailable holds on his rank,  
_ _Unshaked of motion; and that I am he  
_ _Let me a little show it, even in_ -"

"Holmes?"

Watson's voice.  Holmes snapped back to himself with a start and realized that he was leaning forward, his finger pointed at Gladstone, the book held in his other hand, his voice loud with Caesar's authority and assumed kingship.  He let his hand drop, and coughed.  "Yes, Watson?"

"Holmes," Watson said, and he stepped out of the door to the stairwell, his eyes heavy with sleep and short hair all mussed on one side from where he had lain on the pillow.  He was wearing a bathrobe too - the first time Holmes had actually seen Watson in his nightclothes, as he preferred at least to have on a shirt and pants as he came downstairs - and his feet were bare.  Holmes looked for the nasty scar that undoubtedly caused Watson's limp, but it was hidden by the robe or, if it were visible, the light was too dim to show it clearly.  "Holmes," he repeated, his voice crackly.  He rubbed at his face.  "Are you reading... to the _dog_?"

"Ah," Holmes said, and looked at the book, and then back at Watson.  "Et tu, Brute?" he hazarded.

Watson gave him a look that appeared to be equal parts exasperation, exhaustion, and plain old bewilderment.  "Holmes."

Holmes raised an eyebrow.  When woken from sound sleep, it appeared his roommate was both easily vexed and prone to repeating himself.  "Watson," he said in the same tone, almost but not quite mockingly.

That, apparently, had exhausted Watson's late-night store of repartee.  There was a bewildered pause, during which Watson rubbed his eyes and Holmes waited patiently, caught on tenterhooks as he wondered what was to happen next.  "You were really," Watson said after a while, "reading to the dog."

"Yes," Holmes replied.  "Yes, I was."

"And you do realize," Watson continued, sounding for all the world like a parent lecturing an unruly child, "it is currently three o'clock in the morning?"  He even made Holmes _feel_ like a child again, caught with his face and shoes muddy, or his hand in the cookie jar.

"So that's what time it is," Holmes said, answering the letter, if not the spirit of the question.  "I just got home," he added, a touch defensively.  He was making excuses.

"You just got home," Watson repeated, and Holmes winced as he realized that was perhaps the wrong thing to say.  "Holmes, what do you _do_ , out so late at night?"

Holmes knew - had the sneaking suspicion, anyway - that a thousand different, equally criminal careers were running through Watson's head.   _I have been seeing things that have made grown men weep_ , he thought to himself, but did not say it aloud.  Some things did not bear repeating.  "I have been gathering facts," he told Watson instead, with as much dignity as he had left after having been caught reading to a dog.  "It is part of my profession; an aspect of it which I do not take lightly."

He received a skeptical look, which, he supposed, was justly deserved.  "Right," Watson said, and the skeptical look changed to the _we'll-talk-on-this-tomorrow-for-sure_ look, which Holmes knew well.  He sighed.  It was bound to come out sooner or later, then, and better sooner than later with this case, he supposed.

"Back to bed, then, Watson?" Holmes asked briskly.  "My apologies for waking you, I'll read more quietly from now on."  He coughed awkwardly.  Gladstone, bless his doggy _heart_ , was still asleep and offering Holmes no assistance whatsoever.

Watson followed Holmes's gaze to the dog, and then, to Holmes's surprise, walked forward into the living room to sit on the tiger skin rug.  "No," he said, "you've quite awakened me, and once a soldier is up it's quite hard to get back to sleep."  In Watson's eyes, Holmes saw the hot jungle of Afghanistan and counted himself privileged for such a frank view into his roommate's psyche.  "I daresay I'll be a better audience than this lump," he nudged Gladstone with a foot, "though I might succumb to sleep myself, eventually."

"If you do, I shall let you slumber," Holmes replied, strangely gratified by Watson's acceptance.  It seemed he was not the only one who had things he would rather forget, nor the only one who found books a welcome relief from the harsh sordidness of everyday life.  "However, he added, putting the book back up to his face, "if Gladstone begins to snore, I will be obliged if you wake him for me.

Watson chuckled.  "Of course."

Holmes found his place again, halfway down the page, and began to read, slipping easily back into Caesar's character now that he had an attentive, human audience.

" _... and that I am he  
_ _Let me a little show it, even in this:  
_ _That I was constant Cimber should be banished  
_ _And constant do keep him so_."

Perhaps he had seen things that had made grown men, other grown men, weep, he thought as he modulated his tone and expression for the different characters, dramatically acting out Caesar's death scene and his last gasping words - _"Et tu, Brute?"_   But at least he had something to come home to after the long night was over, something, such as it was (reading Shakespeare in the dark by the light of a single lantern to a former soldier, now a wounded doctor, and his sleeping dog) that even the best and most experienced of men could not claim for their own.

London was filthy and death roamed the streets at night, but this played no small part in making it all bearable.


End file.
